Hispanic Officer Says Police In Brooklyn Defer to Hasidim

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Published: November 15, 1990

A Hispanic police officer in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn asserted yesterday that officers in his precinct are encouraged to give special, kid-glove treatment to members of a Hasidic sect at the expense of black and Hispanic people.

Specifically, the officer, Hector Ariza, charged that his superiors discouraged officers from handcuffing and arresting Hasidic Jews even in cases of assaults on police officers or others, while black and Hispanic people are routinely taken to the precinct station house.

Instead, the officer contended, the members of the Satmar sect are usually given summonses at the scene, which he claimed are later dropped.

It is highly unusual for an officer to step forward publicly and criticize the department. Flanked by members of the Hispanic community, the 27-year-old officer also told reporters at a news conference that the rank-and-file officers at the 90th Precinct are ordered to give parking tickets along streets where Hispanic residents live but to avoid the Hasidic section.

He said he had been put on guard duty in a parking lot as punishment when he objected to the system. "I have witnessed firsthand a conspiracy to deny the equal rights of Hispanics," Officer Ariza said. Special Treatment Denied

Suzanne Trazoff, a police spokeswoman, denied that the police give Hasidic Jews special treatment. She said the summonses issued this year have been distributed geographically with 5,955 in the Hasidic section, 6,010 in the Hispanic neighborhood and 6,090 in another section that has sizable white, black and Hispanic populations.

Since December 1989, Ms. Trazoff said, of the 33 people arrested whose charges the police later dropped, only one appeared to be Jewish and the majority were Hispanic.

The commander at the 90th Precinct, Inspector Emanuel Neuwirth, did not return telephone calls from a reporter.